After Thailand came....
The girls kinda frightened me with their wigs and makeup. No seven year old should have to be put through that. I guess if they really want to... I wasn't one of those girls. No really - ask my mom.
The second group juggled hourglass shaped ... tops?... on ropes. It was pretty cool. Some of them could toss them really high and catch them. Their strange costumes on the other hand? All I can think is... SPACE BUNNIES! If Barbarella had worn a bunny suit, this would have been it... with more cleavage.
And then the LSU Tiger's dance team appeared. Why? No idea. I missed getting a picture of the mascot somehow.
The HK Rope Skipping Club came by. They seemed to range from 7 to about 15 years old and some of them were really good. Colin was relieved to see that they were instructed to stop skipping and just walk for a while after they passed us. The parade would have been a really long affair for those kids if they had to jump rope the entire parade route.
Macau had the next float. It was obviously paid for by the tourism committee, as was the Thailand float, but ended up being much more commercial in nature.
The Drumcats were a percussion group from the Korean Entertainment INC. Girls drumming in leather pants and boots with revealing tops (considering the culture). Enough said.
The next presentation that walked past was a group of children that dressed to represent the city. Starting in the bottom right corner and rotating clockwise: The first, second and third pictures are representing the buildings of the city. Some are more vague (in the first picture) and some are more distinctly represented, like the Central Plaza (second picture), the Two International Finance Center (shiny building on the left of the third picture and also the 4th tallest building in the world) and the Tsing Ma Bridge (also in the third picture). The fourth picture (top left hand corner, for those who are lost) shows little girls in pink who are wearing signs with street names on their heads. As a point of interest, if you look really closely, you can see that the girl waving in the bottom right hand corner of the picture is "Queens Road" (Colin and I live on Queen's Road West).
The Hong Kong Jockey Club had a large group of kids dressed as jockeys and the second best design of float for the night. The official New Year's Race was the morning of Saturday, 5 February.
The Shanxi Drum Troupe had an awesome performance. They were very charismatic and the crowd responded really well. They were from mainland China as part of the international performing groups.
The seventh float in the series was produced by the Vegetable Marketing Organization.
After this, I must most sincerely apologize for the picture quality. I was worried as I took pictures that I wasn't getting enough light to be able to see anything, so I realized at this point I could put my camera on "Night mode." Night mode is wonderful because it's like using low light film - the camera takes in more of the light so that you can see more in your photo. Night mode is terrible for moving subjects that aren't well lit ... which I didn't seem to really notice until it was too late.
The Kagoshima Ogionsa All Ladies' Mikoshi group from Japan performed next. I'm not exactly sure what they were performing, but they were certainly putting on a cultural show. The lanterns and standards were beautiful.
Then they carried in this woman on top of what we thought was a float. It had a scale model of a pagoda and the woman was really into the fan dance she was doing. The photo is a little blurry, but you can see it on her face. She's really excited.
The Japanese also brought the JR Kyushu Shinkansen Balloon, which looked like the front end of a plane. It was very random.
Another very commercial float by the China Travel Service (Holdings) HK Ltd was next.
As the parade started to wind down, the floats became more frequent. We finally got to see the New Year's Rabbit float. We thought it was strange that it wasn't at the end, like Santa Claus on Thanksgiving. This float was accompanied by a "Lion Dance" which might have been more aptly described as a "Bunny Dance."
The next float was another commercial float presented by China Telecom.
A broadway song was performed by the John Burroughs High School Powerhouse from the United States. I believe they were one of the groups performing live broadway shows during the first week of CNY.
Disneyland Hong Kong presented a float called "Celebration in the Air." I thought it was quite well done and tried to get good pictures for all of the Disney fans at home. :)
One last marching band sponsored by the Hong Kong Special Region Drum Corps & Marching Band Association marched past before...
...the Hainan Provincial Tourism Administration's float, promoting tourism to the tropical Hainan Island of China.
A group of strangely dressed people carrying large candy-shaped standards walked past. They reminded me of Alice in Wonderland a bit, but I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be with the Hainan float or not.
At this point it was getting late and, as groups had stopped coming along the parade route, Colin and I thought the parade was over. Apparently we missed the last float, advertising Ocean Park Hong Kong. We hopped aboard the metro along with quite a few drunken people and made our way back home.
That's the end of the parade photos. We hope you all enjoyed them. Once again, if you click on the photos you can see larger shots of them and leave us a comment. :)
"The Japanese also brought the JR Kyushu Shinkansen Balloon, which looked like the front end of a plane. It was very random."
ReplyDeleteBut, then again, so are the Japanese...